Psych Investigation Episodes: Episode 1 (A Young Adult Scifi / Fantasy) (33 page)

She gave the brownies one last look before
starting on dinner. Melissa would be coming over tonight, and she
loved talking with the girl. Jack was definitely going to be
annoyed. Alana would probably end up spending more time with
Melissa than he would while the two of them engaged in
girl-talk.

She sung out loud to herself while she prepared
dinner.

Paro made sure he met each one of their eyes
while he spoke. “I have one rule and one rule only. No one is to
speak at a volume above the conversational level I am using right
now. Every single one of you will get your say, I promise. But if
anyone so much as raises their voice, or speaks with an angry or
demeaning tone, I will dole out punishment on the spot. And you
know me well enough to know I’m not bluffing.”

Paro looked around the planning room. Each
member of his team looked each other in the eye and
nodded.

“
Now,” Paro began, “let me make it
perfectly clear that no one here, not even myself, knows how Jack
did what he did, why he did what he did, or even
what
it was
that he actually did. I won’t waste any more time discussing it. I
am allowing us to discuss his fate as a group, because I feel that
as a team, you have earned at least that much. Though the decision
ultimately is mine, I’m weighing in everything you say. This, I
promise.”

“
That feeling,” Sarah said. Her eyes
were down trodden, and she looked exhausted. “It was like when that
general Deven Moore paid us a visit, only it was so much
worse.”

Melissa raised a questioning eyebrow, and Sarah
filled her in. She had been in school during that frightening
ordeal.

Of everyone on the team, she seemed to be
taking this the worst. During the nightmarish event, Melissa had
remained calm and really proved her worth. Had it not been for her
actions, they’d all be dead. But now that the situation had calmed
down, Melissa looked sick with worry.

Paro noticed that Michael was almost shaking
with anticipation, so Paro nodded and allowed him to speak
next.

“
Look, fellas, I know we’re worn and
shaken up from what just happened. But let’s remember who Jack is
and what he is. I don’t think he did what he did on purpose.
Remember how he had no idea he started the fire? Well, I think it’s
kinda like that.”

Kazou sighed. “I never for a moment thought he
meant to do any of this.”

“
Then why do you—”

“
Let me finish, Michael. The fact
that I agree with you is not a good thing. Jack could’ve killed
every one of us. You, me, all of us, we all came very close to
lying in caskets while being lowered into the ground. I
am
sorry that I called him a demon earlier, but Michael, after what we
all just saw, Jack Harris should never be allowed out in public
again. What he did was so unbelievable that I’m no longer positive
he’s even a human being.”

Melissa balled her hands into fists and gritted
her teeth while she listened to Kazou speak, and Paro gave her a
warning glance. He wasn’t in the mood for her attitude.

Sarah shocked the room with what she said next.
“I agree with Kazou. It would be irresponsible of us to allow that
boy around people again. I’m the only one here with an affinity for
Telepathy, so you don’t know what I felt. You can’t even begin to
understand it.”

Tears flowed down her delicate face. Paro’s
heart warmed whenever he took in Sarah. She was as kind as she was
brilliant. Her black hair hung from a ponytail behind her head, and
her soft cheeks brightened as she spoke.

With each passing day, Paro felt increasingly
uneasy in her presence. He had promised himself he would never
love, his work was too important for relationships. Yet every time
he looked at her, he felt emotions he didn’t know he still
had.

For her to suggest turning in Jack, she
must be really, really shaken up. Never, would the Sarah I know be
willing to give up on someone.

“
Jack is a good boy,” she whimpered,
“but I just don’t know what to do anymore. If he’s ever allowed in
public, what will happen if he does that again, whatever it even
was. Oh, God, I thought there were twenty or thirty Telepaths
surrounding us. I know we’re not supposed to bring it up, and I’m
sorry, Paro, but no human being should’ve been able to do what he
did.”

“
Only as far as we know,” Melissa
said. They all turned to her. She was finally breaking the silent
state she’d been in since they flew the unconscious Jack and Andy
back to H.Q.

The situation was beyond serious—it would be
more accurate to call it dire or perhaps even cataclysmic. Yet
despite the world-shaking events that had just taken place, Paro
had only been able to think of how upset Jack would be if he knew
he’d flown in a helicopter while he was asleep and didn’t get to
enjoy the ride. It maddened Paro just how much the boy had changed
him in such a short time.

“
The way I see it,” Melissa
continued, “we don’t know much about the higher ranks, do we? Paro,
I know you’re not allowed to go into specific details, but can you
at least confirm to us that when you attained the rank of
Captain
you were told secrets and
other stuff that most of us are forbidden to know?”

Paro nodded. “That I can.”

“
So then, who knows how powerful
some of the higher-up Psychs are? I know I’m still new to all this,
but they never really show us what they’re capable of. Maybe Jack
just has the strength of a General. I mean, didn’t you say this
Deven Moore did something similar?”

Even Michael had to shake his head at that.
“Only slightly, Melissa. Sure, the guy did something weird that
made us feel like running away and whatnot, but he didn’t conjure
creatures of the night to murder us.”

“
Regardless, does that mean he
couldn’t?”

Paro had to admire Melissa’s thought process.
She was correct about the lack of information. Nobody had any real
idea of just how powerful the Generals were. And while Deven Moore
had created a similar oppressive feel, that didn’t mean he was
using all his power at the time. But still, Paro thought it
unlikely that anyone in the world had ever done what Jack just had.
The mere thought of it made him tremble.

“
There’s one thing you guys aren’t
taking into consideration,” Michael said. “Sarah, if we report
Jack, he won’t be locked away for long and ya gotta know that. The
Op. teams’ll pick someone like him right up. You think what Jack
did was dangerous now? What about when he’s forced to use his
abilities with the intent to kill?”

Kazou’s eyes became dark. He cleared his
throat. Now, there was a terrible look to his face, and Paro was
almost afraid of what he’d say.

“
I’ve been thinking that same thing
ever since we left the train terminal. Life can be cruel, life can
be harsh, but life is still life. Much like you, I can’t bear the
thought of Jack ending up as a killing machine, and we alone know
the danger he possesses to this world. The boy is unconscious, at
peace. I will be willing, if allowed, to do what
must
be
done. We could put him to sleep. He’d never feel a thing. I know it
would kill us inside, but—”

“
To hell with the rules!”
Melissa shouted in a high-pitched wail. She leapt out of her
leather chair and jumped on top of the glass table then sprinted
across and lunged at Kazou, knocking him out of his own chair and
onto the floor. She pulled back her fist and crashed it down onto
his face, sending blood spraying from his nose.

Paro was so shocked by what he was seeing that
he froze for a moment. In that instant, Melissa picked Kazou off
the floor and slammed him into the glass table, shattering it with
a loud and deafening clatter. The large Japanese man was smashed
clean through it and again landed on the floor.

He howled and grabbed her by the shirt with one
hand, and with the other he slammed his fist into the side of her
face, flinging her backward.

Melissa was sent crashing into a wall, knocking
diagrams and bulletins to the floor, and Paro recovered from his
shock immediately. There were few things certain in the world of
Psychs, but if there was one thing that was almost guaranteed it
was this—when two Reinforcers clashed, one almost always
died.

Paro put his incredible disappointment in the
two aside and drew a great deal of power into himself. He’d always
had an affinity for Reinforcement, but upon learning he was an
Unrestricted, he spent a great deal of time studying Telekinesis
and Manipulation. Telepathy was the only affinity he seldom
bothered with.

With a strength born of natural talent combined
with years of practice, Paro narrowed his eyes and focused on the
two. As if grabbed by invisible, powerful arms, the two were
separated and flung to opposite ends of the room, crashing into
walls with a loud bang and hanging against them like
dartboards.

Michael and Sarah were sitting in their chairs
wide-eyed. Their arms dangled in midair where just moments before
they rested on the now shattered table.

“
What did I just say, you foolish,
silly brutes!” Paro snapped at them. “Oh, you don’t like that word,
do you?
Well maybe you shouldn’t act like
them!
”

The two turned and glared at Paro, furious at
the derogatory term, but after a moment they simply looked ashamed,
especially Melissa. Paro released the two, and they slid down the
wall and landed on their rears. The door to the planning room
slammed open, and five Psychs of various affinities rushed in with
almost a dozen security officers in tow.

“
Is everything alright in here,
Captain?” asked the first woman to rush in. She was Amanda Pierce,
Telekinetic and team-leader of her own. The people that followed
her in were her members.

“
Ah, everything is fine, just a
little accident.”

She eyed him with suspicion as she looked
around the room at the broken table, the Japanese man with the
broken nose, and the ruined bulletins and diagrams littering the
floor.

“
Two Reinforcers just went at it,
didn’t they?” she mused.

“
Can we keep this quiet please,
Amanda?”

She laughed. “You owe me a drink. Come on,
guys, this isn’t our problem.”

She left the room and the security officers
followed in suit. Paro waited until they were out of earshot before
turning his eyes back to his two idiot Reinforcers.

“
I’m disappointed in you both.”
Melissa and Kazou both got to their feet and dusted themselves
off.

“
Melissa, you started this fight.
The table, the bulletins, everything is coming out of your pay.
Kazou, for you to even suggest what you just did … you’re lucky I
don’t report
that.
Euthanizing a member of
my
team, are you out of your mind? Every day I wonder why you don’t
join the Op. teams. It seems that each day I’m finding more and
more about this bloodlust you have, and as your team-leader, I’m
wondering where I’ve failed you.”

Kazou looked more than a little ashamed. A look
of deep regret and humiliation came into his eyes, as the usually
stone-faced Kazou shed a single tear of his own.

“Gomennasai,”
he whispered. He bowed and closed his eyes, before
turning around and leaving the room.

Damn, now I have to feel guilty,
Paro
thought.

He had been too hard on him, and now he was the
one who should be ashamed, but what Kazou had suggested was not
only inappropriate, it was among the most disgusting suggestions
any member of his team had ever made on the topic of
anything!

“
I’ve decided,” Paro said, and with
his words, the team snapped alert. “Wake up the Harris-kid and fly
him back before his mother throws a hissy fit. I’ll call her and
tell her we got held up or something. I’ll make an excuse. We’ve
got no other choice. Kazou was right about one thing, though—we
can’t let him become a killing machine. So, as a team we’ll just
have to fight through this. I don’t know what that thing with his
eyes was, but Melissa, if you ever see him do that again, knock him
the hell out before he gets to so much as blink with
them.”